How Tough Was He?

Knowledge of Calvin is of two kinds. There is knowledge of Calvin himself, as we know him in his life. And there is the knowledge of ourselves that we project onto this historical figure in the name of our many versions of Calvinism and anti-Calvinism. Nowhere is this distinction more illuminating than in my own native Scotland, the country where Calvin’s theology carried out its most thorough reformation in Europe, led by his Scottish follower John Knox. One modern Scottish poet put it like...

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